"With the U.K.'s largest oil and gas field coming back on-stream in March"
- James Knightley, an economist at ING
Britain's economy will escape from falling into a triple-dip recession, helped by strong manufacturing data for February, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research said Wednesday. The U.K. gross domestic product is likely to grow by 0.1% in the three months to March, rebounding after a 0.3% contraction in the fourth quarter of 2012. Even despite strong manufacturing data, which showed that the output jumped by 0.8%, confidence in the recovery was helped by the improvement of a broader measure of industrial production, which bounced back by 1%, reversing much of January's 1.3% decline. The sharp improvement in manufacturing, which accounts up to 7% of the U.K. economy, offset another poor performance by nation's exporters.
"With the U.K.'s largest oil and gas field coming back on-stream in March, likely leading to another positive gain in output, we are more optimistic that the U.K. can avoid its third technical recession," James Knightley, an economist at ING, said.
"There is little sign of a goods trade-led recovery emerging in the U.K.," Scott Corfe, senior economist at the Centre for Economics and Business Research. "Goods exports still haven't become sufficiently internationally competitive for a rebalancing of the economy to take place."
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